[Web-SIG] Philosophical question: publishing classes vs instances

[Carlos Ribeiro]

Hello all,

I've been following the Web SIG, although I only signed the list
today. I'm working out some concepts related to object-oriented web
application design. I'm sure I'm not the first to do it :-) and I
would like not to reinvent the wheel -- at least, not the _same_
wheel.

The "natural way" to implement Python web apps seems to be through
some type of object publisher -- a system that finds the correct
object, that is 'published' in some part of the site, and activates
this object upon request. I've checked a few systems, and although I
can't claim extensive experience with them, most seem to operate based
on publishing object *instances*.

I'm not working the high level design for an application of mine, and
I thought that the correct way to do it out be to publish object
*classes*, and let the web framework instantiate the class and them
activate upon request. Most of the time, I can't preserve information
in the server side anyway. And even if I use some of the advanced
techniques (for example, the persistent Javascript trick that apps
such as GMail use), an object instance seems to be a better fit,
although it would need a more complex management model.

I would like to know what do you think of it, and if is there any good
resources that I can study to understand all the issues. Maybe I'm
missing something; I don't believe that performance alone justifies
such preference, and it's something that I would like to understand.

Best regards,

-- 
Carlos Ribeiro
Consultoria em Projetos
blog: http://rascunhosrotos.blogspot.com
blog: http://pythonnotes.blogspot.com
mail: carribeiro at gmail.com
mail: carribeiro at yahoo.com